4/19/2011: Stefan Verbano in the ODE has details. (Also see Bill Graves in the Oregonian. Read the comments if you dare.) One of the faculty union proponents, Anne McLucas, is quoted in the ODE:
According to OUS data, upper-level administrative costs have risen 63 percent from 2006 to 2010, while instructional expenses have increased by only 22 percent.
This seems ballpark from the data I’ve seen.
UO’s spending per student FTE compared to Carnegie Public Research university averages, for 2008.
- $2,347 on Institutional support, aka Central administration. General administrative services, executive management, legal and fiscal operations, public relations and central operations for physical operation. 96% of the average
- $8,850 on Instruction. Faculty salaries, academic departments: 91% of the average
- $1,937 on Academic support. Libraries, academic computing, Dean’s Ofc: 70% of the average
- $3,521 on Research. External grants and internal research support: 63% of the average
This is 2008 – before all of the increases in central administration that Linda Brady and Frances Dyke made kicked in. Yet UO administrators still stick to the claim that UO’s administrative expenses are 38% of our peers.
But as for the follow-up argument that Lariviere’s new partnership will make this worse: I disagree.
I’m a cynic when it comes to the UO administration. I know this shocks you. Frohnmayer let our administrators give themselves raises while faculty salaries were frozen, and he took every dime he could get for himself as well.
But Lariviere – already very well paid himself, so why worry – is telling the administrators that they will not get any more raises until after the faculty does. (With a few exceptions, like Randy, Scott and Michael.) This concentrates their minds wonderfully. On the other hand he does seem to be allowing the administrative bloat bubble to build, in terms of their overall budget share, if not individual salaries.
I’ve been at UO over thirty years. During that time its been my observation that there are two things that will never get better: Salaries and parking.
After all, the Administration sets their own salaries and they have Reserved parking spaces, so they don’t feel the pain of the common folks on campus.
The UO Administration has only given lip service to salary and parking improvements during the last 30+ years. Improvements will never happen without stronger employee reperesentation, i.e., strong faculty and staff unions. Something the faculty is loathe to do. And thus the Administration will continue to keep faculty salaries down to help fund their own salaries and perks. Faculty have only themselves to blame for letting the Administration take advantage of them for so many years. Face it: Complacent faculty have been outsmarted by the Administration for many years and I see no hope of this changing in the foreseeable future.